Sturdy Signals

Introducing the Discount, Costing Cutting, and Apology Signals

By
Joel Passen
February 13, 2023
5 min read

More Signals! More insights! More knowledge!  Today, we’re excited to announce the release of three new Signals designed to help our customers better understand their customers and what to know, now. As always, the new Signals were inspired by Sturdy’s existing customers and their feedback. 

Introducing the “Apology”, “Discounting”, and “Cost Cutting” Signals. Designed and built by our data engineering team, the new language models detect the following:

  • When your internal teammates apologize to customers
  • When discounts or price reductions are discussed with customers
  • When customers ask to cut costs or reduce spend 

Sturdy is the only customer intelligence platform with out-of-the-box, purpose-built language models. Adding these three new Signals brings the total number of Signals available to Sturdy customers to 23. Sturdy customers will be able to take advantage of these new Signals on Feb 15, 2023.  

Apology

This Signal detects when a teammate apologizes to a customer. This Signal takes directionality into account and only “signals” on outbound interactions. 

For example, when a teammate says something like, “we sincerely apologize for just getting a response out to you now,” in a support ticket, a signal is being sent. The teammate apologizes for dropping the ball. Maybe this is an isolated issue. Or, if this is a common occurrence, it could be a problem and, ultimately, detrimental to the relationship. 

Discount

This signal detects when a discount or price reduction is discussed with a customer. This signal takes directionality into account and only “signals” on outbound interactions. 

For example, when a teammate says something like, “I was approved to offer a 15% discount,” in an email, a Signal is sent. The teammate is providing a price reduction. Alone this may not be critical, but in the aggregate, discounting can be a bad habit for account management teams

Otherwise, Sturdy shows details about specific accounts. It’s always informative to know if any teammate has offered a customer a discount — and when, and, most importantly, why. Sturdy surfaces this information in easy-to-read dashboards, so you don’t need to wade through your CRM, CSP, or ticketing system. 

Cost Cutting

This signal detects when a customer is looking to cut costs or reduce their spend. This is another directional signal that only fires on incoming interactions 

For example, when a customer says something like, “We've loved the platform so much, but we are trying to reduce costs as much as possible” in an email, a signal is being sent, and often swift action needs to be taken to solidify a renewal, spot a trend, or answer questions like — what segments are asking for cost reductions, etc.

Discovering and delivering customer Signals at the right time helps teams understand what needs attention — know, now. Survey and health scores don’t give teammates the knowledge of what to do now. Signals uncovered from everyday interactions with your customers are insanely relevant — a must have.  In today’s competitive SaaS environment, the most successful companies are learning to “listen” and interpret the Signals that their customers are giving them about their products and services. The category-leading companies are doing this at scale - automatically with Sturdy.  

Catch your interest? Want to see how it works? Get in touch

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The Most Dangerous Threat to CROs

Joel Passen
July 1, 2025
5 min read

The most dangerous threat to CROs doesn’t live in the opportunity pipeline.

It's churn.

  • It doesn’t scream like a missed quarterly pipeline goal.
  • It doesn’t show up in dashboards until it’s too late.
  • It's rarely caught by a generic 'health score'.
  • It's the board meeting killer.

Retaining and growing our customers is the only repeatable, compounding, capital-efficient growth lever left in B2B businesses.

📉 CAC is way up.

📉 Channels are saturated.

📉 Talent is expensive.

📉 Competition is fierce.

📉 Switching costs are low.

The path to $100M used to be “sell, sell, sell.”

Today? It’s “land, retain, expand.”

No matter how strong your sales motions are or how slick your product or service looks during the sales process, if your customers are churning, you’re stuck in a leaky bucket loop of doom.

Every net-new dollar you win is offset by dollars you lose. It's just math.

Yet most GTM orgs still operate like retention is someone else’s problem. "That's a CS thing."

  • The CS team might “own” the customer post-sale.
  • Account Management may own the renewal and growth number.
  • Support is in the foxhole on the front line.
  • RevOps might model churn with last quarter’s data.
  • Marketing might send an occasional newsletter via email.
  • Finance may be leaning in on the forecasting.
  • Product is building things that supposedly the customers want.

But in reality, churn is the CRO's problem. We wear it - or should.

If your go-to-market motion isn’t designed to protect and grow customers from Day 1, you’re not just leaving money on the table — you’re setting fire to it.

Retention and expansion aren’t back-end functions. They’re front-and-center revenue motions.

The most valuable work these days starts after the contract is signed — not before.

We need to stop treating post-live as a department and start treating it as the engine of durable growth.

Software

Have you heard this from your CEO?

Joel Passen
April 29, 2025
5 min read

"How are we using AI internally?"

The drumbeat is real. Boards are leaning in. Investors are leaning in. Yet, too many leaders hardly use it. Most CS teams? Still making excuses.

🤦🏼 "We’re not ready."Translation: We don't know where to start, so I'm waiting to run into someone who has done something with it.

🤦🏼 "We need cleaner data."Translation: We’re still hoping bad inputs from fractured processes will magically produce good outputs. Everyone's data is a sh*tshow. Trust me. 🤹🏼♂️ "We're playing with it."Translation: We have that one person messing with ChatGPT - experimenting.

😕 "Just don't have the resources right now."Translation: We're too overwhelmed manually building reports, wrangling renewals, and answering tickets forwarded by the support teams.

🫃🏼 "We've got too many tools."Translation: We’re overwhelmed by the tools we bought that created a bunch of silos and forced us into constant app-switching.

🤓 "Our IT team won't let us use AI."Translation: We’ve outsourced innovation to a risk-averse inbox.

It's time to put some cowboy under that hat 🤠 . No one’s asking you to rebuild the data warehouse or perform some sacred data ritual. You don’t need a PhD in AI.

You can start small.

Nearly every AI vendor has a way for you to try their wares without hiring a team of talking heads to perform unworldly 🧙🏼 acts of digital transformation.

Where to start.

✔️ Pick a use case that will give you a revenue boost or reveal something you didn't know about your customers.

✔️ Choose something that directs valuable work to the valuable people you've hired.

✔️ Pick something with outcomes that other teams can use.

Pro Tip: Your CEO doesn't care about chatbots, knowledgebase articles, or things that write emails to customers.

What do you have to lose? More customers? Your seat at the table?

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Talent gets you started. Infrastructure gets you scale.

Joel Passen
April 29, 2025
5 min read

We obsess over hiring A-players. But even the best GTM talent will flounder if the foundation isn’t there.

I’ve seen companies overpay for “rockstars” who quit in 6 months—not because they weren’t capable, but because they were dropped into chaos. No ICP. Bad data. No process. No enablement. No system to measure or coach.

Great GTM teams aren’t built on purple squirrels. They’re built on a strong foundation.

That foundation looks like this:

✅ A crisp, written ICP and buyer persona (not just tribal knowledge)

✅ Accurate prospect data to target the right ICP

✅ A playbook that outlines how you win—and how you lose

✅ A clear point-of-view that your team can rally around in every email, call, and deck

✅ Defined stages, handoffs, and accountability across marketing, sales, CS

✅ A baseline reporting system to see what’s working—and what’s not

When this exists, you can onboard faster, coach better, and scale smarter. It's not easy, and it’s not sexy, but it works.

Want to cut CAC and increase ramp speed? Start with your infrastructure. Hire into a structure.

How many customers will you have to lose before you try Sturdy?

Schedule Demo
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